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Gravemaskin
 
PostPosted: Wed, Sep 02 2015, 13:04 PM 

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Joined: 29 Jul 2007
Location: Norway: Home of the Trolls

Confidence schemes and other shady ways to illicit gold from people.

The Sword Coast Wink
A very popular way to manipulate people with wealth, this trick got it's name from it's popular and wide use up and down the sword coast. The main reason it's so popular is that you need no startup capital or wealth yourself. All that's needed is good looks and a silver tongue.

To pull off this trick, the "Wink" will have to cultivate a romantic relationship, often trough sexual favors at first. It's not unusual for there to be two people running this trick, one person to first gather information about the mark, what sort of person they like, other personal interests and various other information that the "Wink" can use to become the "perfect" person. Once the relationship is established and a few months old, an incident will occur.

The most common, is to have the partner come around, demanding some form of payment from the "Wink", family debt, personal debt or a fake blackmailing scenario. The mark will swoop in to pay the debt and be the hero, thus giving up some money. Another variant is for the conspirator to approach the mark with incriminating evidence to obtain blackmail money or other threats that threaten to harm the "Wink". The final variant is dubbed the "Widowmaker" as it involves robbing the victim, either by the "wink" identifying weak points to arrange a house robbery, or by going trough with the wedding and then having the mark killed once the "Wink" is included on the will.

The Athkatlan empty palace
This trick got it's name from the capital of Amn, where it was historically first done. This trick is hard to pull off, and requires a sizeable startup capital, but depending on how long it's run, you can walk away with millions of gold.

The key to this trick is investment. You cultivate business relationships and get people to invest in a seemingly endless pot of gold. Be it; trade ships, mines, shops and so on. You personally invest in it, and walk away with a HUGE return, often in the 500% range, and drop a hint that you have a perhaps not entirely legal insight into how well the various trips and quarters will be in the company.

Talk people into investing a little bit at first, perhaps a thousand gold each..then after a month or so, you return to them with five thousand gold, saying the investment payed off and how you've got a line on the next route, perhaps one that'll pay off equally or a little bit less or more. 9 out of 10 will invest the profit they earned plus more coin. Word will spread, and soon you'll have dozens of potential investors, all whom are keeping it to themselves as it may or may not be entirely legal. Of course, you are not investing any of the coinage, and are in a position to control whatever company people are investing in. Make up fake shipping routes, fake ships, fake the reopening of closed mines; make everything look good on a ledger to sell people on the investments.

Offer to pay people for services, in the form of investments or shares in your trading company, let all of it continue to build with no one actually getting paid what they've initially invested.. Once you feel people are starting to sense what you're doing, disappear with all of the coin, and have the fake ships, mines or similar be "destroyed" in accidents in a "real" paper trail, making it look like everything went to the nine in a sudden turn of events. It will usually allow for a clean getaway and for you to settle in another area of Toril, with insane wealth.

The Turmish switcharoo

This one is easy to pull off, but requires some startup capital and being quick on your feet, as you'll be hunted. It got it's name from a Thief's guild that ran this trick in Turmish harbors.

It involves selling something of value, gold, jewlery, gear, trade bars and so on, all at a discount. Once the purchase is made, collect the wares into a woven bag and return it to the buyer. Of course, you're not putting the actual wares into it, but rather fake worthless items of the same weight and that make the same sounds.. If someone buys metallic armor, give them scrap metal from a ruined one, switch our jewlery with small glass orbs and so on. Once the switch is made and the customer leaves, pack up the valuables and leg it before they discover the switch. Be prepared to have to dodge guards and never NEVER sell to people of means, such as adventurers, nobles with their own militia or bodyguards and so on, or you'll be facing retribution down the road.

It's possible to make a good profit off this trick, but never run it more than two or three times in the same city, and never in the same area. A good rogue or vaudevillian can make off with a few thousand gold a month running this scam.

The Halruaan merchant
Given name due to mages being the only ones able to run this trick, it's not overly popular and rare enough that most people don't know about it's existence.

This trick requires a mage to make an arcane mark and cast instant summons on several expensive wares to be sold to adventurers at a premium. Remember they must be items of worth as the casting of the spells is highly expensive. Once the preparations are made, sell the items to adventurers and at night, while they are sleeping, scry on your items to make sure they're not being used, then trigger the instant summons spell, re-obtaining the item and leaving the adventurers thinking they got robbed in the night. Leaving you with the gold for the item, and the item itself, free to prepare and repeat the trick if desired.

The Omlar gem
This trick requires two to successfully pull off, and an emerald of poor quality and color.

The first person enters a shop, and purchases an expensive item, but have too little coin on them to complete the transaction, asking the shop owner to hold the item until they can retrieve the rest of their gold, and leaving the emerald as a collateral.

Once the first person has left, the second enters and sees the emerald before it's put away, proclaiming his or her adoration and surprise to see an Omlar gem here, and offering an obscene amount of gold for it, up to several thousand. The shopkeep may have heard of Omlar gems and know how rare and valuable they can be to the right people, but will state it's not theirs to sell. The second person then offers to buy it and asks to be contacted at a local inn or shop once the owner returns, so that he or she may buy the gem.

Shortly thereafter the first person returns and naturally.. the shop-owner will offer to buy the gem. Try and get the price for the transaction higher up, stating skepticism for the shopkeeper's desire to buy it. Once the transaction is made, walk away with the gold and never complete the original purchase of whatever item brought you to the shop in the first place. The shop-owner will think they've struck gold and try to make contact with the second person, only to later discover they never existed. To -really- sell this, the second person should have some fake credentials as a gem smith or trader or another appropriate field where the gem might be highly valued.

This trick is popular, because it prays on the greed of the shop-owner and will often leave people so embarrassed that they won't pursue the matter.

The Demonic surprise
This trick is EXTREMELY dangerous, as it requires teaching a parrot to speak the name of demonics lords that take a strong dislike to such!

Train the parrot to scream "Orcus" when it's hungry or agitated, then try to sell it to adventurers, proclaiming something like it being trained to speak command words on magic items to aid in combat. Once the transaction is made, follow the adventurers and wait for the parrot to start screaming.. Once the demons arrive, wait for them to kill the adventurers and once they're gone, make away with all of their gear to the nearest shopkeep. Again, this is a very dangerous, but quick way to make a huge profit, and requires murder by proxy, so very few evil people ever try to run this scheme.

The haunted house
This trick requires the aid of a necromancer to successfully pull off.

Have the necromancer conjure undead spirits in the manor of a rich or wealthy person, leaving them with a haunted house. The necromancer's friends will then offer to purge the manor for a premium.. but require nobody be present in the house during the purging. Once free access to the manor is obtained, rob the person blind, have the necromancer remove the undead and slip out of town before the mark knows what's been done. Bold people can try to claim the reward money or demand half up front before going trough with it to amass a bigger profit.

This trick is dangerous and will attract the attention from local churches or regional paladin orders, as such it's not recommended to run it in the same region twice as word of mouth spreads quickly.

The Desperate Guard
This trick requires at least two people and fake guard uniforms for whatever city you're running this in. Optimally, there should be three to four people to help sell it.

Intercept new arrivals to the town, and demand to have a look at their items due to recent smuggling activities and such.. Find any items of worth and proclaim it to be smuggled goods. The person will naturally protest, but have one of the "guards" start to complain about his salary and how this item could feed him and his family for a whole week or month. Banter back and fourth between yourselves, until the person suggests for you to just take it and for him or her to be allowed to just leave and promise to never bring such into the city again.. Protest slightly, but eventually agree to this for whatever fake reasons you make up.

The tricked person will be all to happy to escape having to pay a huge fine or be placed in jail, and you can walk away with a rare and expensive item.. This trick is -especially- effective, if you target actual thieves or smugglers with it, as they will assume you to be corrupt guards.

This trick has been popular in cities known to be riddled with criminal activities, due to the high number of corrupt officials or guards.

Disclaimer
I've listed these tricks, to spread awareness of them, not to give people ideas to run scams or tricks on adventurers or honest people. This is purely for the sake of transparency and as such, I am not responsible for any misuse of the knowledge contained herein, or anyone running variations of the scams listed here.

- Thomas Quinn

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Adair - Druid and part time treant cosplayer


 
      
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